Dove Dispatch #27 (Mike Wen - Gallery)
Fundraise timing, hype around NFTs, power users, and much more
GM and welcome to Dove Dispatch #27!
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Gallery is a digital art gallery for people to display their collections of NFT's and digital art.
They just announced a $2.69M seed round led by Collab+Currency, with participation from Distributed Global, Coinbase Ventures, Scalar Capital, and others. Lattice, who maintains Dove Metrics, is excited to be participating in the round as well.
Co-founder and CEO Mike Wen dropped a ton of knowledge about his experience with fundraising.
You launched Gallery in June and hit pretty meaningful traction with top creators before raising money. How did you think about what the right time to raise was?
When thinking about the right time to raise, it was a combination of a few factors. While traction was critical, more important was having the right team in place where funding would enable us to move faster by bringing everyone full-time.
I had launched Gallery purely as a side project in March/April. I wanted to create an elegant and personal way to share my collection of NFTs with others. I quickly found out others felt the same way as it picked up traction over the next few months with some big collectors (DCInvestor, PleasrDAO, SquiggleDAO, etc.) and it became clear we were solving a big problem.Â
In the meantime, I got a bunch of friends to hack with me on the project during nights and weekends. Once it became clear there was a bigger opportunity and the team was ready to go full time, outside capital made a ton of sense because then we’d be able to bring the team full-time and hire to move faster.
Interest around NFT’s has exploded since you launched Gallery - how did those trends impact investor interest?
NFTs have been extremely hot over the last half-year and there are no signs of slowing down. As a result, it was an incredibly friendly environment to be raising which was obviously very helpful -- we ended up having way more interest than we had cap space for.
On the flip side, with more interest, one interesting challenge was separating those who truly believed in the vision vs those simply trying to get exposure to NFTs.
How did you think about getting aligned investors in the round? Did you get early users of the product on the cap table?
It was incredibly important to us that our earliest users and believers also had the opportunity to invest and get the upside. As a result, not only did we invite our biggest power users (eg, DCInvestor, FlamingoDAO, PleasrDAO, etc), we also opened up the round to our whole initial cohort of users.Â
The reason for that was two-fold: (1) we aim to be a user-owned network down the line and while we couldn’t launch a token on day one, we want that in our DNA from the start, and (2) we want to empower our most valuable stakeholders to be even larger supporters so it was incredibly strategic for us to get some of our biggest users to have aligned incentives in using Gallery.
At the end of the day, it gave us even more confidence in the product and network we’re building given that our top users were so eager to put their own money in.
🙌 Thanks to our sponsors at BarnBridge
Any suggestions for founders raising right now?
As a first-time founder, I definitely learned a ton about the nitty-gritty details of raising a round. If I could summarize my advice into three things, they’d be:
There’s never been a more founder-friendly environment to raise in crypto. Don’t be afraid to leverage that.
Always remember that this is your round. Don’t let others push you into taking on more dilution or accelerating/extending the timeline if you don’t want to.
Don’t get caught up in the hype of raising money. Remember that it’s all in service of building the product.
What’s next for Gallery?
We’re excited to keep shipping, grow the team, and roll out the beta to more users.Â
Today’s product is just the tip of the iceberg for what we have planned -- Gallery in 6 months will look much different than where we are today.
This means there’s a lot to do over the next year so thrilled to get to work!
Many thanks to Mike for sharing such insightful insights.
Last week 28 projects announced fundraising rounds:
Dappio | Your one-stop solution, Solana Wonderland — with participation from Andrew Kang, Jason Choi, Tom Schmidt, Mr. Block, Albert Chen, Bassjackers, Marc Woodward, and Ivan Li.
Forte ($725M) | Building economic technology for video games using blockchain — with participation from Sea Capital, Kora Management, Animoca Brands, Overwolf, Playstudios, Warner Music Group, zVentures, Solana Capital, Griffin Gaming Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global Management, Huuuge Games, Cosmos, and Polygon Studios.
Subsquid ($3.8M) | Your friendly and powerful substrate query node framework — with participation from Hypersphere Ventures, Zee Prime Capital, Illusionist Group, Chainflip, 0x Ventures, Faculty Group, Lattice Capital, DFG, Jsquare, SMAPE Capital, Signum Capital, Bware Labs, Signal Ventures, D1 Ventures, DIA Association, Zeitgeist, Astar Network, Shiden Network, and KodaDot.
Clear Protocol ($2.5M) | Decentralized derivatives factory — with participation from Huobi Capital, Kronos Research, LD Capital, SpringWind Ventures, Double Peak, Markarian Capital, Gate.io, VRM, Hoo.com, AC Capital, StillWater Research, DWeb3 Capital, Foresight Ventures, AlphaCoin Fund, NF Ventures, Mintable, and NPC DAO.
DigiNation ($2.4M) | A Web3 Metaverse featuring NFT-based innovation — with participation from LongHash Ventures, OKEX, Huobi Capital, Rarestone Capital, Spark Digital Capital, Yuanyuzhou Ventures, and 21DAO Ventures.
Massa Labs ($5.8M) | The decentralized and scaled blockchain — with participation from BlueYard Capital, Acequia Capital, Numeus, Charlie Songhurst, Dascof, Mediapps Innovation, Ariane Capital, Andurance Ventures, Aussie Capital, ZBS Capital, and Bpifrance.
​​Saddle Finance ($7.5M) | An automated market maker optimized for pegged value crypto assets like tokenized bitcoin and stablecoins — with participation from Polychain Capital, Electric Capital, Nascent, Project Galaxy, and eGirl Capital.
GuildFi ($6M) | A Web3 infrastructure to connect games, NFTs, and communities, with an aim to maximize players’ benefits and enable interoperability across the Metaverse — with participation from DeFiance Capital, Hashed, Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Alameda Research, Animoca Brands, Dapper Labs, Play Ventures, ​​Coin98 Ventures, and SkyVision Capital.
Agoric ($32M) | A Proof-of-Stake chain utilizing secure JavaScript smart contracts to rapidly build and deploy DeFi — with participation from Placeholder, NGC Ventures, Spartan Group, Compound VC, Acrew Capital, Figment Capital, Chorus One, and DAO Maker.
MixMob | A play-to-earn game powered by Solana — with participation from Solana Capital, DeFiance Capital, Merit Circle, Arthur Hayes, Darren Lau, Darryl Lau, Alex Svanevik, Oliver Blakey, Pavel Bains, QCP Capital, Dave Waslen, and Eric Dadoun.
All.Art ($4.5M) | The new infrastructure for NFT with embedded license rights and AMMs running on Solana — with participation from Delphi Digital, Solidity Ventures, Solana Capital, Huobi Capital, Solar Eco Fund, SkyVision Capital, NGC Ventures, Infinity Ventures Crypto, CoinUnited Capital, Ausvic Capital, Prometheus Labs, GSR, Banter Capital, 0x Ventures, Solanium Ventures, Wave 7, SMO Capital, Bitcoin Addict Thailand, Octopus Crypto Capital, Spark Digital Capital, Legion Ventures, Paribus Ventures, Alves Ventures, and 1010 Capital.
izumi Finance ($2.1M) | Multi-chain liquidity mining platform — with participation from Mirana Ventures, Everest Ventures, YouBi Capital, LucidBlue Ventures, Puzzle Ventures, Nothing Research, Tess Ventures, WolfEdge Capital, and Adaptive Labs.
Trusted Node ($2M) | Maximize yield while securing the network — with participation from Plutus VC, Lion DAO, NIOX DAO, Tavis Digital, and Primo Consulting.
Darkblock ($1.7M) | Guaranteed exclusive ownership of digital artwork — with participation from Greenfield One, A&T Capital, SMAPE Capital, Unpopular Ventures, and Arweave.
JPYC ($4.4M) | Japanese yen-pegged stablecoin — with participation from Headline, Circle, and i-nest Capital.
Zebec ($6M) | A revolutionary DeFi technology that empowers real-time, frictionless, and continuous streams of payments — with participation from Republic, Shima Capital, Breyer Capital, Liberty City Ventures, Resolute Ventures, Launchpad Capital, Infinity Ventures Crypto, Cadenza Ventures, Hack VC, Backend Capital, Finality Capital Partners, Gemini, Meltem Demirors, Joe McCann, Tamar Menteshashvili, Andrew Masanto, Wave 7, SOLBigBrain, Adam Winnick, and Michael Ross George.
Neon Labs ($40M) | Ethereum Virtual Machine on Solana that enables developers to scale and get access to liquidity on Solana — with participation from Jump Capital, Solana Capital, Three Arrows Capital, IDEO Colab Ventures, Spartan Group, and Ethereal Ventures.
Woo ($30M) | Only platform with ZERO trading fees, DEEP liquidity, and a customizable GUI — with participation from Three Arrows Capital, Gate Ventures, QCP Capital, Crypto.com Capital, AscendEX, Ant Alpha, MEXC Exchange, LBank, Fenbushi Capital, BitMart, 3Commas, TokenInsight, AVATAR, viaBTC Capital, and PSP Soteria Ventures.
Themis ($2M) | Lend, borrow, stack yields, auctions, and leverage on your UNI-V3 NFTs — with participation from DAO Maker, NFX, Chain Financial, LD Capital, and 0xBilly.
Jet Protocol ($6.8M) | A decentralized borrowing and lending protocol built for speed, power, and scalability on Solana — with participation from Paradigm, Reciprocal Ventures, Solana Ecosystem Fund, Three Arrows Capital, GSR, AscendEX, Republic, SkyVision Capital, and TPS Capital.
CoinMENA ($9.5M) | Buy & sell digital assets in the MENA region — with participation from Kenetic, Alameda Research, Girnas Capital, BECO Capital, Arab Bank Switzerland, and Bunat Ventures.
Sarcophagus ($1.8M) | A decentralized dead man's switch application built on Ethereum and Arweave — with participation from Greenfield One, Blockchain.com, Coral DeFi, Placeholder, Luis Cuende, and Kain Warwick.
Meow ($5M) | The compliance-first, all-cash way for corporate treasuries to access crypto market yields — with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Gemini, Lux Capital, Ash Egan, Castle Island Ventures, Slow Ventures, Jump Capital, Shine Capital, ANIM Fund, Packy McCormick, Austin Rief, Julian Shapiro, and Charlie Songhurst.
Notabene ($10.2M) | A ready-to-use platform that helps companies comply with the travel rule from day one — with participation from Jump Capital, F-Prime Capital, Luno, Bitso, BlockFi, Gemini, Illuminate Financial, CMT Digital, Fenbushi Capital, Charlie Delingpole, Castle Island Ventures, and Green Visor Capital.
Matter Labs ($50M) | The first EVM-compatible zkRollup powered by our zkEVM — with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Placeholder, Dragonfly Capital, 1kx, Blockchain.com, Crypto.com Capital, ConsenSys Ventures, Bybit, OKEX, Alchemy, Covalent, Gnosis, and Rarible.
Pulsr ($2M) | A social platform for NFTs — with participation from Spartan Group, Sequoia Capital, AOI, Future Fund, Benjamin Milstein, Mark Daniel, Anthony Pompliano, and Mason Borda.
Parallel Finance | Decentralized lending, staking and borrowing built on Polkadot — with participation from Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, and Shima Capital.
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